Autonomous Agentes

Autonomy and Desire in Machines and Cognitive Agent Systems

by Kevin Magill

Co-authored with Yasemin J. Erden, published 'Online First' in 'Cognitive Computation', 2012, DOI DOI 10.1007/s12559-012-9140-9. Available through subscribing institutions. Drop me a line if you can't access.
Substantially revised from 2011 paper of same title.

The development of cognitive agent systems relies on theories of agency, within which the concept of desire is key.... more The development of cognitive agent systems relies on theories of agency, within which the concept of desire is key. Indeed, in the quest to develop increasingly autonomous cognitive agent systems, desire has had a significant role. We argue, however, that insufficient attention has been given to analysis and clarification of desire as a complex concept. Accordingly, in this paper, we will draw on some key philosophical accounts of the nature of desire, including what distinguishes it from other mental and motivational states, in order to identify some key characteristics of desire as a complex concept. We will then draw on these in order to investigate the role, definition and adequacy of concepts of desire within applied theoretical models of agency and agent systems.

Controladores Fuzzy para o Posicionamento Sem Bola do Goleiro no Futebol de Robôs Simulado 2D.

by Jessica Meyer

In: 5th WTICG-BASE - 5th Workshop de Trabalhos de Iniciação Científica e Graduação Bahia, Alagoas e Sergipe, 2008, Vitória da Conquista. Proceedings of the 8th Escola Regional de Computação Bahia, Alagoas e Sergipe (ERBASE), 2008. Sociedade Brasileira de Computação (SBC), Porto Alegre, 2008, vol. 1.

This paper describes a research about fuzzy controllers for the positioning of the goalkeeper without the ball in the... more This paper describes a research about fuzzy controllers for the positioning of the goalkeeper without the ball in the 2d simulated robot soccer. The goal of this research was to improve the behavior of the goalkeeper, raising the number of catches and decreasing the number of goals, improving its positioning to catch the ball. To validate the research, 30 matches were simulated against some of the best teams of the world that participate of the RoboCup. The achieved results are presented, the conclusions are discussed and future works are suggested.

Bahia2D: Team Description

by Jessica Meyer

In Proceedings of Robocup 2007, Atlanta. Robocup Federation, Zurich, 2007, vol. 1.

Agentes y Arquitecturas de Control para Robots Autónomos Móviles

by María Lucila Morales-Rodríguez

María Lucila Morales-Rodríguez
En: Memorias del 1er Simposium Intertecnológico de Computación e Informática SICI’00. Cd. Madero, México. 2000

El presente trabajo incursiona en el campo de los robots autónomos móviles como caso específico para el desarrollo de... more El presente trabajo incursiona en el campo de los robots autónomos móviles como caso específico para el desarrollo de una propuesta de arquitectura de diseño que apoye a sistemas basados en agentes cooperantes. Se considera que el comportamiento de un robot ante una serie de situaciones es la meta que se desea lograr, y que para realizarla se ven involucrados una serie de factores que deben ser controlados y coordinados para que el robot pueda realizar su objetivo.

Existe una estrecha relación entre los agentes y la robótica, de hecho los paradigmas de diseño para cada uno de ellos siguen la misma tendencia. Esto se debe en gran medida a que un robot puede ser considerado como un agente físico.

ARQUITECTURA DE DISEÑO QUE APOYE SISTEMAS BASADOS EN AGENTES COOPERANTES

by María Lucila Morales-Rodríguez

María Lucila Morales-Rodríguez, Héctor J. Fraire Huacuja, Jesús V. Flores Morfin
Memorias del Congreso Interuniversitario de Electrónica, Computación y Eléctrica CIECE’00. Aguascalientes, México. 2000

El presente trabajo incursiona en el campo de los robots autónomos móviles como caso específico para el desarrollo de... more El presente trabajo incursiona en el campo de los robots autónomos móviles como caso específico para el desarrollo de una propuesta de arquitectura de diseño que apoye a sistemas basados en agentes cooperantes. Se considera que el comportamiento de un robot ante una serie de situaciones es la meta que se desea lograr, y que para realizarla se ven involucrados una serie de factores que deben ser controlados y coordinados para que el robot pueda realizar su objetivo. Cada control es efectuado por un agente que colabora realizando su tarea, de tal forma que la arquitectura que se propone apoye a
éste tipo de agentes cooperantes, facilitando el diseño de la programación que se pudiese implementar, permitiendo una mayor flexibilidad al diseñador y una respuesta más dinámica.

Trust In Automation: Designing for Appropriate Reliance

by John Lee

Beyond rational autonomy: Levinas and the incomparable worth of the student as singular other

by Clarence W. Joldersma

The definitive version of this paper is published by Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education 39:1 (2008) 21-47, and is available at http://www.springer.com/education+%26+language/journal/10780

This article explores the question: Why are students of worth? Educationally, an answer often involves a Kantian... more This article explores the question: Why are students of worth? Educationally, an answer often involves a Kantian response: They are of worth because they are always ends and never means. This response is usually connected to a notion of autonomy interpreted as individual, rational self-determination. The article argues for a different answer. The essay begins with a recent educational example of construing worth as rational autonomy. Meira Levinson, in her book The Demands of Liberal Education (1999), argues for a version of rational autonomy which is taken in the essay as a Kantian response to the question. The essay then turns to Kant’s own understanding of intrinsic human worth as ends. Although the essay agrees in general with the notion of end, it criticizes Kant’s version of rational autonomy. Instead, it argues for a notion of worth as irreplaceable singularity. Both the critique of the Kantian answer and theessay’salternative are shaped by the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Here technical notions of “the other,” proximity and singularity are brought to bear on the question of human worth. The Levinasian alternative, so the essay argues, better answers the question of student worth by highlighting the incomparability of the student as a singular other.

Autonomous Control System for Satellite Formation Flying

by Kary Thanapalan

Co-authored with Veres.S.,
Published in the IEE Digests on Autonomous agents in Control, 2005, pp 85 -91.

Recently there has been an increase of interest in the concept of satellite formation flying due to the efficiency... more Recently there has been an increase of interest in the concept of satellite formation flying due to the efficiency gains that can be obtained from using a large number of small crafts instead of one large one. In formation flying it is required that the satellites should fly in specified positions relative to the others and
with specified attitudes. For this specific motion pattern it is necessary to design control algorithms which are efficient and easy to implement on board. A cluster of satellites needs to operate autonomously to fulfil the control requirements of a mission without human intervention. An agent based control system is proposed to address the problem. The proposed software architecture allows each satellite to monitor the movements of the other satellites and to communicate and cooperate with others to maintain performance. The collaborative autonomous control system is able to reconfigure sensor and actuator functionality in face of degradation or malfunction. The control architecture is analysed for reliability and logical consistency

Agent Based Controller for Satellite Formation Flying

by Kary Thanapalan

Co-authored with Veres.S.,
Published In the proc. of 2nd Int. Conf .on Intelligent Sensor, Sensor Networks and Information Processing, IEEE-ISSNIP’05, Melbourne, Australia, 2005, pp385-390

In this paper an agent based control scheme for satellite
formation flying is discussed. The underlying idea of... more In this paper an agent based control scheme for satellite
formation flying is discussed. The underlying idea of our
design is to use a multi-agent architecture for satellite
formation flying control. The architecture is designed to
enable autonomous formation flying activities. The
performance requirements and algorithms are described.

Internet-delivered multi-patient virtual reality exposure therapy system for anxiety disorders

by Ni Kang

Co-authored with Brinkman W-P, van Riemsdijk MB, Neerincx MA
ECCE 2011

Motivation –The project is to reduce the therapist’s workload in virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) for anxiety... more Motivation –The project is to reduce the therapist’s workload in virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) for anxiety disorders and explore cognitive ergonomic factors in the design of an internet-delivered multi-patient treatment system.
Research questions – The aim can be achieved by system improvement on both the patient side and the therapist side, which leads to two main research questions. First, how should a virtual environment be designed to reduce the therapist’s workload and give a relative high presence to patients? Second, in what way should a usable internet-delivered VRET system be designed which can treat multiple patients simultaneously?
Research approach – A case study of a VRET treatment system for social phobia is carried out to investigate the design of an internet-delivered VRET treatment system and its impact on the main actors, e.g. the patient and the therapist.

Bye-Bye Agents? Not

by Cristiano Castelfranchi

Cristiano Castelfranchi discusses the weaknesess and the possible crisis of the agents paradigm. I examine some... more Cristiano Castelfranchi discusses the weaknesess and the possible crisis of the agents paradigm. I examine some potentialities and ambitions of such an approach, which shouldn't be reduced to a technology. He disagrees with Hewitt identifying agents with cognitive (BDIA; beliefs, desires, intentions, and affect) agents, and with his opposition to agents organizations, which in fact presuppose agents and might be conceived as agents.

Document Souls: Joining Personalities to Documents to produce pro-active documents engaged in contextualized, independent search

by Gregory Grefenstette

G. Grefenstette, J. G Shanahan, "Document souls: Joining personalities to documents to produce pro-active documents engaged in contextualized, independent search ”, Context base Information retrieval, Paris, France, July 5 2005.

The idea behind the semantic web is that documents will contain additional markup that make explicit the information... more The idea behind the semantic web is that documents will contain additional markup that make explicit the information content of unstructured media. We present here the Document Souls system which allows documents to become animate, actively searching the wider world for more information about their own contents, attaching relevant information to itself as additional markup. A Document Soul is a set of information requests that are attached to a document as annotation. A demon within the system polls these requests and activates search agents that asynchronously respond to unsatisfied requests. To control search and relevance, collections of information requests are packaged as personalities which filter out unwanted information. In this paper, we present the structure of the Document Souls architecture and the function of personalities for performing contextualized search.

A biosemiotic note on organisms, animals, machines, cyborgs, and the quasi-autonomy of robots

by Claus Emmeche

full reference:
Claus Emmeche (2007): “A biosemiotic note on organisms, animals, machines, cyborgs, and the quasi-autonomy of robots”, Pragmatics & Cognition 15(3): 455-483.
[ this is a modified version of a chapter that later came out as: Emmeche (2007): “On the biosemiotics of embodiment and our human cyborg nature”, pp. 379-410 in: Tom Ziemke, Jordan Zlatev and Roslyn M. Frank (eds.): Body, Language and Mind. Volume 1: Embodiment. (= Cognitive Linguistics Research 35.1). New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ]

Abstract:
It is argued that robots are just quasi-autonomous beings, which must be understood, within an... more Abstract:
It is argued that robots are just quasi-autonomous beings, which must be understood, within an emergent systems view, as intrinsically linked to and presupposing human beings as societal creatures within a technologically mediated world. Biosemiotics is introduced as a perspective on living systems that is based upon contemporary biology but reinterpreted through a qualitative organicist tradition in biology. This allows for emphasizing the differences between (1) an organism as a general semiotic system with vegetative and self-reproductive capacities, (2) an animal body also with sentience and phenomenal states, and (3) higher forms of anthroposemiotic systems such as humans, machines and robots. On all three levels, representations (or sign action) are crucial processes. The “representationalism” invoked by critiques of cognitive science and robotics tends to focus only on simplistic notions of representations, and must be distinguished from a Peircean or biosemiotic notion of representation. Implications for theorizing about the physical, biological, animate, phenomenal and social body and their forms of autonomy is discussed.
Key Words:
biosemiotics, autonomy, organicism, representationalism, robots, levels of reality.

Towards a theory of delegation for agent-based systems

by Rino Falcone

co-authored with Cristiano Castelfranchi; published in: Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Special issue on Multi-Agent Rationality, Elsevier Editor, Vol 24, Nos 3-4, , pp.141-157.

In this paper a theory of delegation is presented. There are at least three reasons for developing such a theory.... more In this paper a theory of delegation is presented. There are at least three reasons for developing such a theory. First, one of the most relevant notions of "agent" is based on the notion of "task" and of "on behalf of". In order to found this notion a theory of delegation among agents is needed. Second, the notion of autonomy should be based on different kinds and levels of delegation. Third, the entire theory of cooperation and collaboration requires the definition of the two complementary attitudes of goal delegation and adoption linking collaborating agents.
After motivating the necessity for a principled theory of delegation (and adoption) the paper presents a plan-based approach to this theory. We analyze several dimensions of the delegation/adoption (on the basis of the interaction between the agents, of the specification of the task, of the possibility to subdelegate, of the delegation of the control, of the help levels). The agent's autonomy and levels of agency are then deduced.
We describe the modelling of the client from the contractor's point of view and viceversa, with their differences, and the notion of trust that directly derives from this modelling. Finally, a series of possible conflicts between client and contractor are considered: in particular collaborative conflicts, which stem from the contractor's intention to help the client beyond its request or delegation and to exploit its own knowledge and intelligence (reasoning, problem solving, planning, and decision skills) for the client itself.

Principles of Trust for MAS: Cognitive Anatomy, Social Importance, and Quantification

by Rino Falcone

Co-authored with Cristiano Castelfranchi, published in: Proceedings of the International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS'98), Paris, July, pp.72-79.

After arguing about the crucial importance of trust for Agents and MAS, we provide a dejnition of trust both as a... more After arguing about the crucial importance of trust for Agents and MAS, we provide a dejnition of trust both as a mental state and as a social attitude and relation. Wepresent the mental ingredients of trust: its specific beliefs and goals, with special attention to evaluations and expectations. We show the relation between trust and the mental background of delegation. We explain why trust is a bet, and implies some risks, and analyse the most basic forms of non-social trust (reliance on objects and tools) to arrive at the more complexforms of social trust, based on morality and reputation. Finally we present a principled quantification of trust, based on its cognitive ingredients, and use this "degree of trust" as the basis for a rational decision to delegate or not to another agent. The paper is intended to contribute both to the conceptual analysis and to the practical use of trust in social theory and MAS.